Bohemian Times Gazette #3

Basquiat! Basquiat!! Basquiat!!!

Poster design by Christopher Makos

King Pleasure - the Basquiat Retrospective We’ve Awaited

By Stephen DiLauro

Lately, it’s been feeling like the art world is embracing a new dynamic of masterpiece meets amusement park. Banksy, Van Gogh, Artechouse, and Arcadia Earth are current immersive exhibits in NYC alone.

Then there’s the 50,000 square foot Superblue Experiential Art Center in Miami. It was built to provide multiple spaces for immersive exhibits. In northern California, the same thing is happening. The technology is growing and the expanding possibilities seem set to overpower traditional artistic expressions entirely.

Who can appreciate a mere painting after feeling one was part of its technological clone? We’ll have to wait and see. Meanwhile, let’s hope all the galleries don’t relocate to Branson, Missouri or Orlando, Florida.

So, I was skeptical about King Pleasure. That’s the new immersive exhibit of some 200 never-before-seen works (and ephemera) by the late Jean-Michel Basquiat at Starrett Lehigh, 601 West 26th Street in Chelsea. My question going in  was: How much more aggrandizing can the late artist’s reputation endure? The answer is “I had no idea.”

There already have been a feature movie directed by Julian Schnabel, two or three documentaries, and countless magazine, newspaper, and internet articles. Then there are the tomes. On a recent visit to Dublin, Ireland, I visited the home of an American expat who had shelves of Basquiat books and exhibition catalogs. I lost count at 60-something.

My conclusion about King Pleasure? It will enhance Basquiat’s reputation. It is a lovingly assembled, extensive look at the power of the artist’s work, from the point of view of his family. See it and you will have no doubt as to Basquiat’s place in art history.

Did you know there is a street named after the artist, in Paris? Place Jean-Michel Basquiat is in the 13th Arrondissement? I had no idea until I visited King Pleasure.  

Oddly, the recreation of Basquiat’s studio on Great Jones Street was, for me, more interesting for what it lacks. It felt so thin. I thought about Francis Bacon’s studio, reconstructed piece by piece in the Hugh Lane Gallery (aka Dublin City Museum) in Ireland. All that comparison did was highlight the tragedy of such a great talent as Basquiat dying so young. (Basquiat died of a drug overdose at age 27.)

Francis Bacon’s studio as recreated in the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin Ireland. Photo by Annie Wright

I was first introduced to Jean-Michel Basquiat by the artist Brian Gormley at a group show in the Mokotoff Gallery in the East Village in the 1980s. Basquiat asked me to write about him. I said I would but did not have the chance to do so while he was alive.

The high point of the King Pleasure exhibit, at least for me, was the recreated Mike Todd Room, VIP lounge at the 1980s mega-club Palladium. While not an exact replica, it brought back a deluge of feelings and memories. I lived three blocks from the back entrance to Palladium and for a couple of years in the mid-1980s, the Mike Todd Room was my local pub.

Keith Haring, Warhol, and Basquiat – we all knew each other by sight and were, as the saying goes, nodding acquaintances, mainly crossing paths in the Mike Todd Room. (Andy snapped Polaroids of me on two occasions, in non-club settings.) I remember when the two gigantic Basquiat paintings were unveiled there.

Seeing those same paintings now, in the context of this show, was more powerful than the original experience. I can’t imagine what these massive Neoexpressionist canvasses would fetch if they ever came up for auction. (Five years ago, a Basquiat painting sold for a mind-boggling $110.5 Million at Sotheby’s. It was the most ever paid for a single work by an America artist.)

I got into a conversation with a  young couple in the recreated Mike Todd Room. They asked me who Mike Todd was? That was a memento mori moment for me. So much for legendary figures. (Todd, among other achievements, produced 17 Broadway shows, won a Best Picture Oscar for Around the World in 80 Days, and invented the Todd AO process, which simplified and enabled wide screen cinematography. He was Liz Taylor’s third husband. He died at age 48 in a plane crash.)

Rooms from the Brooklyn home where the artist was raised added a humanizing touch to King Pleasure. It’s a reminder that he was a human being, too. He was the brother of the sisters Basquiat, who organized this tribute.

Make no mistake, though. Basquiat’s art is what King Pleasure is all about. That fact makes the exhibit a study in intentional greatness. That’s as it should be. I see so much art now that is clearly influenced by Basquiat’s work. None of it even begins to deliver the power evident in so many pieces on display here.

Charles the First by JMB (1982, © The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat

Some 100 paintings are grouped together in gallery rooms. The Royalty room, for example, groups paintings that refer to famous Black musicians, heavyweight boxing champions, Grace Jones (a category unto herself), and others.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (World Famous Vol. 1. Thesis), 1983. © The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat Crayon on paper 22 1_2 x 30 inches

Jean-Michel Basquiat was a political artist. He first gained public attention in Manhattan as half of SAMO, who marked cryptic political and cultural messages throughout downtown neighborhoods in the late 1970s. His political awareness imbued many works through the text and scribbles he often added to his compositions.

The expressionistic heads/skulls and the martyred lines that now seem ubiquitous had never been seen before Basquiat came along. Some imitators, and they are legion, use this word-y element sparingly. None of them that I’ve seen get the political irony and depth of Basquiat.

Oddly, Samo seems to be excised from the official record, as represented by the King Pleasure exhibition. I will remedy this, at least for my readers, in next Saturday’s BTG, with an article on Al Diaz - the surviving half of this seminal street art duo. My point in mentioning it here is to highlight Basquiat’s fascination with the power of the written word, as well as with the power of images.

Over the years I’ve heard snide comments made about Basquiat’s family, and in particular the late Gerard Basquiat, the artist’s father. People have said that all the family did was cash in. If that was so, the King Pleasure show would not exist. Gerard Basquiat kept his son’s estate intact, as is made  clear in video statements by family members and people from the art world that worked with the family along the way.

Some bohemians may carp about the ticket prices: $38 during the week, $48 on weekends. If you love knowledge and can appreciate coming to understand why this artist is truly great, I think you will more than get your money’s worth. It must have cost a huge sum to mount this massive homage, even with the corporate sponsors.

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s sisters run the estate now. They are to be congratulated. The point of King Pleasure is not profit. It’s Love.

Tickets to King Pleasure can be purchased at the exhibition website, https://kingpleasure.basquiat.com/.

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More images from the King Pleasure exhibition available to paid subscribers.

King Pleasure opens Saturday April 9 at Starrett Lehigh, 601 West 26th Street in Chelsea.

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Serial Fiction available to all subscribers every issue:

I wrote this book under the pen name Uke Jackson. It made the best seller list for a time in 2012. There are 50 chapters. So, for the next 25 weeks, Bohemian Times Gazette will publish a chapter on Saturdays and a chapter on Wednesdays, available to all subscribers, free or premium. I hope you enjoy it.

Chapter 3

Maria’s mother was clucking and scattering a handful of grain to her free roaming chickens, to supplement their natural diet of bugs and grass. Rosa Ruiz was in her early fifties. Beneath the brim of a straw hat her face was lined by the years of farm-wifely existence. Her figure was long gone and the shapeless black frock she wore did nothing to hide or accent that fact.

“Mama, I am going to work now.”

“Good. Ask the Inglesa for the egg money. She owes me for eight eggs. Eight. Don’t forget.”

“Eight eggs. I’ll remember. Should I take her some more now?”

“Not until she pays for the eight.”

Maria suppressed the playful, mocking grin that pushed at her lips as she took a moment to watch her mother feed the chickens. Then the youth crossed to the pig pen, puckered and made a loud kissing sound. A medium size porker rousted itself from the shade created by a corrugated tin roof lean-to. The animal snorted and snuffled and did a waddling trot across the pen.

“Hello, Cerrita. How is the life of a pig today?”

Maria teased the pig with the presence of the slop bucket. The animal responded with a series of oinks, grunts, snorts and slurps; then it tried to nuzzle the bucket through the boards of the gate.

“Leave that pig alone. You said you were going. Go.”

“Yes, Mama.” Maria leaned over the gate and dumped the bucket into the squealing pig’s trough. She placed the bucket on the ground outside the pen and began her easy-going amble up the long, rutted, hard-packed red clay track.

A low stone wall bordered the lane out of the farm yard to where a grove of fig trees stood on one side of the track and a stand of pomegranate trees grew on the other side.

Soon, Maria knew, her father would demand her presence there as the family picked the trees clean and carefully placed the fruits in crates for transport to market. The fig trees were heavy with thousands of small ripening purple and green globes, each the size of the clenched fist of a newborn baby.

End Chapter 3

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